


Sea and Sand and Stone

by glitterlessgold490



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Post-Canon, World War I, the author gets to be the hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 11:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10463427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterlessgold490/pseuds/glitterlessgold490
Summary: It is October of 1916.  A young Lieutenant Tolkien is being transported back to England from the Battle of the Somme while suffering from trench fever.He is not the only one looking to return home across the sea.





	

The fever was burning through his very bones, so hot that it seared him with cold. His breath came in shuddering gasps as his teeth clacked. Every cell in his body seemed to be moaning in dull agony, and the cramps raced up and down his legs. He was so exhausted that he would have slept for a thousand years, like a dragon in a tale if he hadn’t been so cold and sore.

“Lieutenant Tolkien, are you awake?” He tried to focus on the nurse’s face floating above him. “We’re going to move you now.”

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“Calais. You’ll be staying here for the night, and we’ll ship you over the Channel to England tomorrow. You’re almost home.”

“Calais.” He remembered that from his first crossing to the continent, remembered the surging of the waves that bore him away from England. “I can hear the sea.”

The nurse frowned. “You shouldn’t be able to-”

“I can hear it,” he said.

 

He was walking along the seashore at twilight, the sky a deep purple, Venus glimmering. The sea murmured and rumbled to itself, words too deep to understand, sending up a salty spray of mist that clung to his clothes and soaked his skin.

He thought at first that the howl was the wind, a high keening that rose and fell and broke, almost a scream, almost a sob, until he realized that it had some sort of melody, and words he did not understand. He saw the figure, who was scant more than a shadow of rags and dark hair writhing in the wind.

“Who are you?” he called to the figure.

It turned, and Tolkien saw its eyes - bright eyes, that shone with a light he had never seen, sunken in a hollow, ageless face. Beneath the wild dark hair were two thin, pointed ears. “You’re an elf.”

“I’m barely anything,” the creature breathed. “Not much more than a wraith, and neither are you. Both of us, trapped on the border between life and death.”

Tolkien was not sure what exactly to say to that, but the creature did not wait for a response. “You, fortunate mortal, will move on quickly, to life or death. I never will.” It flung his head back and screeched into the darkening sky, high and hollow. “Ages and ages and ages I walk! Sea and sand and stone, sea and sand and stone, and always alone! I am the last one, the one left behind.” He whirled at Tolkien, tears dripping from the wild, bright eyes. “They are dead- do you see? Do you see them?”

With a choked cry, Tolkien staggered back. The sea was stained red, and everywhere, the bodies…

They lay in their red-stained uniforms, British and German and French, piled in the sand the way they had lain in the trenches and in the barbed wasteland in between. The sand was tangled in their hair, the The flies were already gathering on the grey flesh, and the stench was both familiar and unbearably savage. What was worst was that he knew the corpses. They were his friends, his brothers.

“They are dead and I remain.” The wraith was sobbing. “It should have been me.”

“I know,” said Tolkien.

“I want to go home,” sobbed the creature. The sand was shifting, blowing in the wind, burying the corpses.

“So do I,” said Tolkien. “It’s just there, beyond the sea. I want to see my wife-”

“I had a wife,” said the figure. “I cannot see her. I cannot cross the sea. I am not allowed.”

“Why not?” asked Tolkien. “Who are you? You never said.”

The creature bared his teeth in a skeletal grin. “They called me Maglor, the last remaining child of Fëanor, the last of the kinslayers. I come from a time before the sun and moon, and my family did deeds great and terrible, all for a stone.” He plucked a white, sea-smoothed pebble from the beach and handed it to Tolkien, with a hand that was charred black. “Father said our deeds would live in story and song until the end of the Earth, and so it must be. I am the only one who remembers, and I must sing the song of our fall, and the evil we did, so the Earth does not forget and curse itself again.”

The sky had grown dark, and slowly the stars were emerging from its depths, glimmering silver. Venus sank low on the horizon, and the wind grew chill. Tolkien stared out towards England, and wondered what it would be like to wait millennia, knowing the sea was impassible and home was lost. He turned the simple white pebble over in his hand. “I can help you,” he said. “Tell me the story, and I will write it down, so the words will live on and you can leave.”

Maglor started at him. “What I did in the war,” he said. “My hands are too stained for redemption -”

“I am a soldier,” said Tolkien. “I have fought too. I have helped create horrors. There has to be hope for you, or else there is none for the rest of us.”

Maglor opened his mouth then, and began to sing. He sang the history of the Earth, the rise and fall of civilizations, of heroes and heroines, their bold deeds and their falls from grace. He sang of evil creeping across the land, and goodness springing up from small places to drive it back. As he sang, he began to crumble - face, hands, hair turning to sand and blowing away on a westward wind.

 

As the final note faded, Tolkien awoke, limp and still exhausted. The nurse was wiping his forehead. “Your fever finally broke,” she said. “Are you feeling better?”

He nodded, swallowing with a dry throat. The nurse patted his arm and moved on to the other patients. He lay still, just breathing. Slowly, he uncurled the fingers of his right hand. In his palm sat the smooth white stone.

**Author's Note:**

> I am in no way, shape, or form an expert on Tolkien or his life. I'm sure I got a hundred things wrong, so please do not take it too seriously!


End file.
